


Ed's Experiment

by Eye_of_Purgatory



Series: Ed's Experiment [1]
Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types
Genre: Alchemy, Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Edward Elric is too smart for his own good, Experimentation, Gen, Horror, Inspired by Frankenstein, Self-Hatred, Smart Edward Elric, Soul Alchemy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-21
Updated: 2021-01-21
Packaged: 2021-03-12 17:48:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,465
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28889379
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eye_of_Purgatory/pseuds/Eye_of_Purgatory
Summary: "The philosopher’s stone is made of human souls. Therefore, human souls must have a quantifiable amount of power. Human souls must be measurable, not the random firing of neurons to approximate an idea of sentience.He has watched the homunculi create mass out of nothing, violating one of the fundamental laws of the universe. And because the philosopher’s stone draws its power from human souls, those must have another fundamental property linking them to mass.Due to the conservation of energy, Ed reasons, souls do not spontaneously spring from nothing. So naturally, he should be able to reverse the process and create a soul out of matter."Edward realizes something fundamental about alchemy, and when Alphonse leaves to visit Winry, there is nobody to stop him.
Relationships: Alphonse Elric & Edward Elric
Series: Ed's Experiment [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2118636
Comments: 1
Kudos: 26





	Ed's Experiment

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you like this! Enjoy!

The philosopher’s stone is made of human souls. Therefore, human souls must have a quantifiable amount of power. Human souls must be measurable, not the random firing of neurons to approximate an idea of sentience.

He has watched the homunculi create mass out of nothing, violating one of the fundamental laws of the universe. And because the philosopher’s stone draws its power from human souls, those must have another fundamental property linking them to mass.

Due to the conservation of energy, Ed reasons, souls do not spontaneously spring from nothing. So naturally, he should be able to reverse the process and create a soul out of matter.

“ED!” Winry shouts, knocking him out of his thoughts. He looks over to see that she is standing in the doorway, furious. Alphonse stands behind her, probably frustrated that the first mission Edward went out without him got him into the hospital.

“I didn’t break my automail this time. Major Armstrong just thought I did.” Edward quickly explains to Winry, hoping she doesn’t decide to throw the wrench in her hand at him. She glares at him, wildly gesturing at his place on the hospital bed, “I broke my leg.”

“Really brother, you should be more careful with yourself.” Alphonse lectures him, as if he doesn’t think he knows that.

“The guy just jumped off the roof! What was I supposed to do, let him get away?” The man had killed three people, his broken leg is worth stopping the man from killing a third.

“Maybe.” Winry glares, then forces him to demonstrate his automail in working condition, moving the toes and fingers in complex ways. 

He whines, “Colonel Bastard has me on paperwork duty for a month.” Neither of them give him any sympathy, Winry continues to look over his automail, and Alphonse sits silently on the floor.

“Maybe that will knock some sense into you. Teach you not to go around destroying my automail.”

“I didn’t even do anything!” Edward shouts in retaliation, “My leg is fine!”

Winry stops looking over the automail to yell back at him, “This time! All the other times I come back to my precious work destroyed!”

“Can you at least try to be careful Ed?” Alphonse pleads at him, giving Edward the puppy-dog eyes that never fail to convince him. 

“Yeah, yeah.” He concedes, knowing that he will stop caring if that lets him save somebody else.

“Stay still so I can look at your arm.” Winry orders, continuing the inspection now that she has calmed down. Edward chooses to keep his mouth shut, because he can at least pretend that he is trying to be careful by not getting hit in the head with a wrench.

After a brief look, Winry finishes the job, “All done,” she says, “Now don’t you go getting this damaged before I see you next.”

“I didn’t even break it this time.” Edward whines, again, because he already told her the automail is fine. She just looked at it and said it was fine, really, what was her problem.

“You know what I mean.” She says, then starts to glare at Edward. He glares back, because it’s only fair.

Al breaks their staring match after a few seconds, “If you’re going to be alright down here brother, then I’m going to go to Risembool with Winry. We haven’t visited in a while” Ed pretends not to know about the books Al stashed away before they burned the house, and he’ll pretend not to know even when Alphonse comes back with mysteriously more information about their quest.

“Have fun Al. I'll be here, slaving over the paperwork Colonel bastard is too lazy to do himself.”

“I’m sure Mr. Mustang is a hard-working man.” Al counters, with far more belief in Ed’s superior officer than he himself will ever hold. 

Edward snorts at the sentiment, “One who manages to mysteriously get a cold when the office has to do paperwork. Every time.”

-

The novelty of being alone in the dorms gets old, and fast. By the second day Edward contemplates calling Alphonse to beg him to come back. But he put Al through so much already, he deserves time away from him. Ed would go insane if he had to spend that much time with himself alone, like Al does, and in fact he is already going a little nuts by being in that situation. He can remind himself that this is only for a month, that in 29 short days Alphonse will be back. 

The days -oh god Ed is in a nightmare, he has a nine to five job- are filled with a regular schedule of filling out near overdue paperwork. Mustang must have been saving all the paperwork he didn’t do before for just this situation, the bastard. He would kick the man if his flesh leg wasn’t covered in a cast. He could probably punch Colonel Bastard, but a punch needs him to let go of his crutches, if he fell over when trying to punch the bastard Ed would die of embarrassment. Even worse than needing Havoc to drive him to and from the dorms each day.

His nights are filled with obsessive reading, and aching loneliness. He can count on a single hand the amount of hours of sleep he gets per night, because he has terrible coping mechanisms and Al is not there to stop him. 

Maybe that’s why he keeps thinking about his theory.

It makes absolute sense, souls have to come from somewhere, truth doesn’t suddenly bless women to be able to break conservation of mass and energy, so the soul must come from either mass or energy. Perhaps a mix of both, but Edward has better evidence for the correlation between souls and mass. He also has evidence for the correlation between the production of energy and mass, namely the electrical byproduct the stone produces when converted to mass.

Edward manages to snap back into reality while still in the car, which is a relief, because he needs materials, “Hey Havoc, can we stop by a pet store or something?” he asks, breaking the silence that had pervaded every time he was driven to and from the dorms.

“A pet store? Why would you ever need to visit one of those?” Havoc asks, taking his cigarette out of his mouth to empty the ashes out the window. 

“Did you know that insect bodies are made up of a material with interesting properties, there could be some use in distilling large quantities of it with alchemy.” Edward lies, knowing that Havoc wouldn't know of the somewhat niche alchemist decades ago who did precisely that.

“I get it boss, alchemy alchemy, blah blah blah.” Havoc takes a sharp turn at the next intersection, “This better not make me run late to my date.” he complains, but still drives to the nearest pet store.

“You don’t even have one.” Ed counters.

“Lies and slander.”

Edward returns to his dorms that night with a bucket full of living crickets that he manages to alchemize shut. People still stare at the child alchemist hobbling the halls with a noisy bucket, but they would anyways.

The only flaw in this wonderful plan, Edward finds, is that he has to draw the alchemical circle while the crickets are making such a racket. It’s a simple circle -not really- based on the circle he found at lab five. It should convert the extra energy from the souls of crickets into extra mass, he chose the element Gallium, because of the low melting point.

Edward weighs the crickets -three times to account for error- before the trial begins, because without a baseline this whole activity is useless.

1.232 kg

1.231kg

1.232kg

A fairly consistent baseline of mass, with this he feels confident in continuing the experiment. The bag of crickets is placed in the center of the circle, carefully so that the chalk is not smudged.

Edward does not pause, placing his hands down to activate the array.

He checks inside the bag when the light fades down. The contents are now a pile of significantly dead crickets, as well as a noticeable amount of silvery shine. Before he can get his hopes up too high, Edward places the bag back on the scale.

1.254kg

1.255kg

1.253kg

The difference is about 22 grams, but it’s significant, in all the ways he cares about, it proves his theory.

-

There are rats running around the dorms, he can barely hear the scrabbling each night and every day. This is the only time it has come in use. A hunk of stale bread, some juice, and cheese lies at different corners of the room. Ed lies and waits for a rat to arrive. If he didn’t have a broken leg, Ed could hunt in a more active way, but this is all he can do. 

Maybe he can learn to alchemically fuse bones back together, defeating this awful cast once and for all. But that’s a project for next week.

A rat ventures out of a hole in the floor, crawling slowly closer to the middle of the room. Edward puts his hands together, waiting, watching. The rat is hesitant, but still bolder than the rats in Risembool. It steps away from the wall.

NOW!

In a flash of light the rat is trapped in a cage made up of floor. Edward can hear the squeaking of the distressed creature, and vows to make this quick. He hobbles over to the center of the room, taking out chalk to re draw the array there just the day before. He refined the gallium from the last experiment, getting a few shards of the material he keeps on his windowsill. 

Carefully, Edward transmutes a nicer cage, one that wouldn’t look too out-of-place in a pet shop. He places the squirming rat inside, using his automail hand so he doesn’t get bitten, out of the wooden box still attached to the floor. With this cage, Edward weighs the rat, subtracting the weight of the cage from the result.

0.350kg

0.350kg

0.351kg

He almost feels bad for the rat, Alphonse would, but Al is a better person than he is. The creature almost seems to know it’s own fate, scrambling around the cage frantically as Ed places it down. The double checks the chalk, so familiar he could see it in his dreams, and finds nothing amiss.

Edward activates the array, which creates more electricity than last test.

When the light fades he can see his result, the rat lies prone and dead, covered in an excessive amount of silvery metal. 

0.655kg

0.653kg

0.654kg

This just proves the theory more, and even though the crickets had a far higher mass, the rat produced far more mass from its soul. There must be a scale concerning the size of the brain, which would explain why the philosopher’s stone is made of human souls instead of any other. 

-

Alchemical reactions are often reversible, so Edward should, in theory, be able to create a soul out of matter. Or perhaps, due to the differing energy levels concerning brain size, be able to convert one type of soul into another. 

Maybe that’s why he ends up with an enormous cage full of rats in his dorm, that he spent the last day catching. He can count 34 of them, weighing in total 13.2 kg. They haven’t started killing each other yet, likely because Edward dosed their water with a strong sedative a few hours ago. As a result, most of them are sleeping. 

His circle draws from many of the themes of human transmutation, although his previous array didn’t account for the soul, this one prioritizes it. The array should first deconstruct the souls and matter, first creating the soul and then the body around it. With such a consideration, it should work. Edward is better at alchemy now, in his dreams he sees the endless concept of arrays and matter, so in no case the array should rebound. 

This array is around three meters in diameter, taking up the majority of the floor space in the dorm. It was surprisingly easy to create, maybe because arrays like this danced in front of his vision. Like Truth was taunting him with this information. He couldn’t sleep for the last few days, in fact, he didn’t know what day it was at all. All he knows is the arrays that sing in his bones.

He places his hands on the circle, and doesn’t hesitate.

The array bursts with blue light and electricity, barely contained as the array does it’s work. Edward can barely see, just able to make out the vague shapes of a creature. The byproduct energy laps at his skin, running in currents around his arms. He is a conduit for the power, it runs through his arms and across his shoulders, but the reaction does not fail.

Right before it ends, the world goes white and Edward is blasted into the wall.

_ Good Job, Little Alchemist _

_ You’re the first! _

Seconds, minutes, or maybe even hours creep by where Ed can only manage to breathe. The words of the gate echo in his mind, unmistakable, and likely not a hallucination. When he finally does open his eyes, he looks to the array. It is alive, it is moving, he can hear it breathe.

The shambling mound is noticeably smaller than before, the materials were 13.2 kilograms, but this creature couldn’t be more than a half of one.

Ed watches his creation crawl over to him. 

He realizes late -far too late, because Alphonse is always the one to tell him when to stop- that this was a terrible idea in nearly every way. Overdue regret doesn’t change what happened though, so he focuses on the scene in front of him.

It’s a baby. 

The strange child is about the size of a fist, but unmistakably humanoid. Its eyes are significantly smaller than that of a human child, but the nose and mouth don’t seem off in comparison. The proportions are incredibly incorrect, it is skinny like a full-grown adult, completely lacking in baby fat, the hands and feet are far too developed, and the head is unusually small. 

But those feel like the least noticeable inconsistencies, considering the fact the child is covered in fur like a cat. The layer of hair is golden just like Edward’s own, and around an eighth of an inch long. Its eyes are golden like his.

It opens its mouth to wail, just like all the other babies he has ever seen. Revealing a full set of teeth, like no baby he’s ever heard of.

**Author's Note:**

> If you liked this, please comment (I love to read them) and you should stick around for the epilogue of the series. I'll post it in a few days, so bookmark the series to catch the release.


End file.
